


the world is not enough (i want your brutal truth)

by ProjectFYERBIRD



Category: Venom (Comics), Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Gore, Cannibalism-By-Proxy, Catharsis, Childhood Trauma, Codependency, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Gallows Humor, Graphic Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Past Sexual Assault, Slow Burn, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-08-09 21:58:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16457825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProjectFYERBIRD/pseuds/ProjectFYERBIRD
Summary: this is a love story. and as with all great love stories, it begins with a murder. or twenty-six.





	1. drive my body like it's a car wreck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from [delicate, petite, and other things i'll never be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MUdi3bvnWY) by against me!
> 
> [warnings for: body possession, graphic descriptions of violence, strong language]

> _Why does_   _tragedy_ _exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief. Ask a headhunter why he cuts off human heads. He'll say that rage impels him and rage is born of grief. The act of severing and tossing away the victim's head enables him to throw away his bereavements._

\- Anne Carson, Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripedes

* * *

This was how your story began: in the pouring rain with a smoking gun held in your shaking hand.

The cold night air on your water slicked skin brought gooseflesh crawling up your arms and prickling at your legs. Nervous energy and the leftover dregs of adrenaline you hadn't come down off of yet was giving you the shakes, and you could hear the beat of your own heart and the roar of blood in your eyes. It almost drowned out the rumbling crash of thunder above. _(God must've bowled a strike, you thought deliriously.)_ What a sight you thought you must have made, standing against the darkness of the night illuminated by the flash of lightning and the glare of spotlights, your clothes soaked through with water and blood until the rivulets of water dripping down your side ran a washed out pink. 

A gruesome scene lay displayed in front of you, the brutal swan song of three harrowing months of following Carnage's path of, well– _carnage._ The breakout at San Quentin. A massacre at a diner, a bus stop, a subway car, before dropping off the face of the Earth, only resurfacing to commit another atrocity. 

But–but. Now.

Cletus lay in a crumpled heap in front of you, blood and grey matter splattered across the concrete in a smear of gore from his skull. You could see glimpses of bone white skull amid bloody clumps of red hair, slick with blood and shining sickly in the light. 

As the last dregs of adrenaline swirled around your system, you were starting to feel the nauseating pain throbbing in your left side. You looked down to the ugly wound in your side, the metal rebar you were impaled on glinting cruelly, covered in your blood and gore. The end of it–the one sticking out of your front that is–was flared out wickedly, twisted to a cruel point from where Carnage had savagely ripped it out of a section of rubble. Breathing a shaky sigh you let your hand fall to your injury, fingers exploring the ragged edges of the wound. New pain ricocheted sickeningly up your abdomen, curling cruel fingers around your ribs and  _squeezing_. Your stomach roiled. Bile crept up your throat. It tasted like acid and faintly of the bagel you had eaten for breakfast that morning. A low moan of pain escaped past your lips unbidden. 

Rubble shifted with a sound of stone grinding against stone. Venom was up ahead, picking himself out of the wall Carnage had thrown him into, his ink-dark form dusted pale with a fine coating of dust and debris. You met his eyes, and he mirrored your expression of dawning horror. Yes, you had done it, you had stopped Carnage, but now you were about to die too. Tough shit, huh? Blood seeped past your lips as you giggled hysterically, the sound of it tinny and distant to your ears. Even the rain and the rolling crashes of thunder was mere background noise to the orchestra of your heartbeat and rushing blood. And then his opalescent eyes focused on Cletus' body, spiralling even wider. 

You followed their gaze to the still-warm corpse that lay at your feet, and screamed. 

A viscous fluid was seeping from the body of Cletus, thicker than blood and yet the colour it. Blood red and charcoal dark. It spilled out from his pores like blood, leaking out from the hole in his skull, pooling around him until it was a shining undulating puddle of biomass. Thin tendrils emerged from its gathering form and lashed out at random, its writhing sending ripples through the puddles of blood and water surrounding it. 

You scrambled backwards as Carnage slunk towards you, slithering over the slick surface with ease even as your trembling legs barely carried you. The backs of your feet knocked into the body of a dead guard and you went crashing down, screaming as the rebar was jostled and pressed deeper into your side. Fresh waves of agony paralysed you, and your breath came in faint, wheezing gasps. Your hand brushed against something rubbery and slick with lukewarm fluids. You moaned low in your throat as you realised your hand was buried in the dead man's guts. You really, really felt like throwing up. 

There was a cold touch against the bare skin of your ankle. 

Venom lunged forward. 

You could feel it sinking into you, wrapping itself around your ankle and pushing deeper and deeper until it was tasting the flesh and blood under your skin. Heedless at your feeble attempts at a struggle, Carnage was slipping beneath the surface of your skin, slinking between your cells until it was in your very blood. It crept through viscera and capillaries and bone marrow, climbing into the hollow of your rib cage and settling itself in the space between your lungs. There was the disturbing feeling of feeling their presence everywhere, horrible and jagged and _wrong_. Something at the back of your mind crumpled into itself, revealing a yawning pit the colour of blood and lined with jagged, downwards-pointing teeth.

By cruel fate, you were an almost perfect match. 

* * *

The first thing you were made aware of was the  _anger_. An ocean of it stood before you, a wine-dark sea whose waters held nothing but seething rage and hatred, eerily calm and glassy flat despite the churning and heaving emotions that lurked just beneath its surface. You could see your reflection in its surface, except your jaw was crowded with too many teeth, jagged and sticking out at odd angles and dripping with blood. You smiled wider than humanly possible, the skin of your cheeks splitting apart and revealing more teeth and a prehensile pink tongue. But the anger that lay boiling in front of you was all your own, not Carnage's. It all belonged to _you_. Small waves rolled off its surface, disturbing your not-reflection, and lapped at your feet and then–

And then–

And then your arms were going numb with a sensation not unlike the one you got when you banged it on the corner of a table or door frame. Panic flared inside you, bright sparks shooting along your nervous system, as it moved on its own accord. Oh, wait, no. That was Carnage. Carnage who was manipulating you from the inside out, pulling on tendons and ligaments like they were the strings of a puppet. Your fingers ghosted along the metal embedded inside you, tracing its circular ridges. Almost tenderly, your hands wrapped around the rebar, fingers delicately curling around it at the base of where metal met torn up flesh. With a swift, brutal tug, you were pulling the rebar out of your side in one sickening wrench. You felt the jagged piece of metal tug on your insides, ripping them apart even as it exited your body and was thrown to the side with a dull clatter. Your vision tunnelled. The only thing you were aware of in that moment was the nauseating pain that seemed to have taken over your entire body. 

The pins-and-needles numbness spread to the rest of your body then, Carnage prickling along your nerves. It felt like you had been packaged up and shoved to the back of your own mind, the toothy chasm breathing down the back of your neck and nipping at your heels. Alien viscera bubbled up from the surface of your skin, crawling across your body and up your neck. You felt it pool on your left side, pausing as it methodically stitched together your damaged organs. It itched, as they fixed the damage. Strands of muscle were tied to other strands as muscle tissue was knitted back together. The wound was sewn shut within seconds, the pain receding to nothing, just the dull body-wide ache you were going to feel for weeks. The only thing left that ever hinted that you had been injured was a puckered, curved length of pink scar tissue as long as your thumb.

Carnage wrapped themself around you, tendrils chasing themselves up your neck, twining around each other before swallowing your pale sweaty face. A toothy grin split apart your face–except it also _wasn't_ your face, either–and you dropped into a crouch, watching through their white eyes as Venom sailed above you. Carnage cackled both out loud and in your head, a strange duality that caused a sort-of echo in your mind. You groaned and curled into yourself in the corner of your mind you had been shoved into, threading your fingers around the back of your head and gripping your hair until your knuckles bleached white. 

It was far easier to scrape your tattered self together and huddle at the edge of the pit than pay attention to the shock of freezing water hitting your system, or how Carnage's vision suddenly went dark with frothing water and bubbles. 

_oh no, bucko, you don't get to do that. buckle up and enjoy the ride!_

There was a sharp tugging sensation at the base of your skull that bordered along the line of painful and you were yanked to the forefront of our mind. Revulsion spread through you as you were forced alongside Carnage's stream of consciousness. You were a passenger in your own body–was it really your own anymore?–made to watch (in your mindscape, Carnage crouched over you, their wicked talons digging into the meat of your jaw and forcing you to  _look_ ) as they piloted your body to the supports of a wooden pier. Muffled sounds of people could be heard from below the water. The support splintered under their grip as they dug their claws into it, hauling themselves up and out of the water with a burst of strength and a spray of water. The rain, which had slowed to a light drizzle, pattered lightly on their shoulders as they surveyed the scene before them. 

People screamed when Carnage lunged forward into the crowd, jaws open and claws outstretched. Cars swerved to avoid pedestrians, crashing into each other or jumping curbs and smashing through storefronts. Writhing tendrils emerged from their shoulders and dragged a screaming woman towards them. Their jaws closed down on her head, crushing her skull into shards of bone that got stuck between their teeth like popcorn kernels. You could taste everything–the crunch of bone being split apart on your teeth, the hot flood of blood gushing down your throat, brain matter melting on your tongue. You felt that they wanted  _more_ ( _lungs, heart, kidneys, liver, all of them delicious_ ) but there was no time. 

Carnage sliced through a fleeing man, hands joining together to form a blade that they brought down on his head. Blood splattered violently across their jaw and they caught it with their tongue, savouring the heady taste as the scent of it hung heavy and coppery in the air. Their claws slashed open the abdomen of a woman, parting skin like it was tissue paper. Her intestines spilled out of her body in long gory ropes that splattered around her body as she fell to the pavement. Grinning, they turned, illuminated in the headlights of an oncoming car. An axe-blade formed from their still joined hands, red as the spilt blood that was currently pooling around their feet. 

As the car approached you saw the frightened faces of its occupants. In the backseat you spied the pale face of a little girl sitting just behind her mother in the driver's seat, her mouth open wide in a scream you couldn't hear over the din of your surroundings. Carnage raised the axe blade, ready to bring it down on the driver's side. 

_NO!_

You screamed inside the prison of your own mind and body and threw yourself at the barrier that separated you from your motor functions. Your blunt nails scrabbled at the wall of interweaving red and black tendrils. You could feel their consciousness just beyond it, pulsing bright and hot like a heartbeat. You tore at the wall until your hand slipped through, tendrils peeling away and dangling like loose strings. Your hand brushed against a bundle of what felt like nerves, hot and slick ( _that wasn't blood, it wasn't, don't think about it Y/N_ ), and you  _pulled_ with all your might, bracing your shoulders against the barrier. 

In the real world the axe blade shifted a few crucial inches and came down along the centre of the car. Metal screeched and crumpled as it was cut clean through, the biomass blade burying itself in the street. 

 _hey hey hey what are you_ doing  _you wailing sack of meat–_

The barrier snapped all of a sudden with a series of wet twangs, tendrils pulling apart from each other like fraying ropes put under too much strain. You could feel their shock, taste it at the back of your throat, lemon sour. Control of your body snapped back to you like a rubber band smacking against your neck as you tumbled head-first into Carnage's mind. Their consciousness was wet and burning hot and smelled like blood, pressing close as if to smother you with the sudden flood of information. You reached out blindly with fumbling hands, fingers tangling in scalding bundles of tendrils that thrummed against your hands in time with your own pulse. You wrapped them around your wrists, ignoring the painful welts they scored into your skin, and tugged like they were the strings of a puppet. 

Back in your body, still encased in writhing biomass, you took a few stumbling steps back. The weapon dissolved into tendrils that crept up your arms. Power sung in your veins, rushing through you with an almost intoxicating intensity. You pulled your toothy jaws into a fierce, mad grin. And then you wanted to throw up. 

'I'm driving this train now.'

Carnage was screaming at you, thrashing and heaving in your grip. (In your mindscape it was now you who was pinning them to the ground, teeth bared and hands wrapped around their neck, squeezing as swirling red and black took over the sclera and the irises of your eyes.) Memories that weren't your own were pressing down at your back like the weight of the world on your shoulders.

A parked car fell victim to you as it was crushed beneath your feet, roof crumpling and glass shattering all over the seats. Its alarm was annoying, but bearable. You used it as a springboard, leaping up the side of a building and scaling it, claws puncturing holes in the concrete. 

_GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT_

You gritted your teeth against the mental onslaught and their ear-splitting screeching and said: "No." 

* * *

You woke up with a start, jolting back to awareness with your legs tangled in the sheets of an unmade bed. Despite how it felt like it was stuffed with cotton, hot spikes of pain lanced through your skull with a vengeance that would make any hangover you've had tuck its tail between its legs and whimper. You could feel the pain down to your jaw, throbbing angrily. God, you felt like utter shit. Your tongue was sandpaper against the roof of your mouth–which tasted like blood, oh god–and your entire body ached in a particular bone-deep way that only came after someone had beat the holy hell out of you (a situation you were, unfortunately, all too familiar with). You felt feverish, shivering and sweating, too hot and too cold at the same time. One eye was almost swollen shut, which you only found out after trying to open them to find out where the hell you even were. Blinking one bleary, crusty eye, you stared up at a peeling ceiling specked with brown spots of water-damage. Except you  _recognised_ that peeling water-damaged ceiling. 

It was the same ceiling you had stared up countless nights while desperately trying to squeeze in even just four hours of sleep. Somehow, for some reason, you were back in your shitty little apartment, the one directly across the hall from Eddie's own shitty little apartment. You sat up in bed with a jerky, stiff movement of muscles that made them twinge in protest, sending fresh sparks of aching pain threading through your back and arms. The bed sheets had been shredded, and deep claw marks scored the thin worn-out mattress. You had also fallen asleep in your clothes, apparently. 

"Did you–" your voice came out in a croak. "Did you do this?" You asked Carnage. You could feel them spread out in your body, feel the toothy pit in the back of your mind, but there was no response from the symbiote. _'Okay then,'_  you thought. You rose shakily from the bed and travelled across the room on trembling legs that felt like they would give out at any second.

At that moment sirens wailed as they passed by your apartment and you groaned, a low raspy noise of pain. You pressed your head to the doorframe, leaning against it heavily. You swallowed thickly, head still rattling from the sirens even as they disappeared down the street, and tasted something coppery thick on your tongue. Nausea roiled in your stomach, sending bile creeping up your throat. Pressing your knuckles to the seam of your lips (pressed together in a thin line), you stumbled to the bathroom. 

Pain jolted up your shins as you collapsed in front of the toilet, only adding to the collection of bruises you had already built up. You crouched over the bowl, kneeling to the porcelain god, heaving and retching. You trembled weakly as you voided your stomach contents, eyes watering with tears like you had when you were six and had thrown up for the first time, your throat stinging. Something that bore a resemblance to relief fluttered its broken wings in the bones of your sternum when you wiped your mouth with toilet paper and it came back stained yellow with bile and not blood. You had half-expected chunks of human flesh to be swirling around in a toilet bowl full of blood.

Shaking your head, you flushed the toilet and rose to take a shower, because god knew you needed it.

You pulled back the curtain and fumbled with the tap until it was all the way in the red 'hot' zone. The small room immediately began to fill with steam and you stripped out of your stiff, blood-stained clothes. Scabbed over cuts reopened as you peeled off your shirt and jeans, the wounds having stuck to the cloth. A dozen more little points of aching pain were throbbing and beading blood when you finally wriggled out of your underclothes and piled them beside the door (and the hole in the plaster where the door knob had slammed straight into the wall in your frenzied rush to not throw up all over your floor).

The water pressure left a lot to be desired and it was nowhere near as hot as you wanted it to be (hot enough to burn the thing living beneath your skin), but it was good enough for the moment. It left your skin flushed pink with blood and sweat beading on your hairline before you ducked your head under the spray. You leaned against the cold tiled wall and watched through half-lidded eyes as blood and sweat and grime was sluiced off your body and sent swirling down the drain. 

By the time you had washed your hair and thoroughly scrubbed your skin raw, the water was lukewarm. You stepped out of it feeling marginally better, only to flinch at the fuzzy reflection sitting in the mirror set above your sink. A hulking red form peered back at you instead of your face, the edges and details of their shape blurred by the steam fogging up the glass. 

Their voice was like a razor blade being scraped down the knobs of your spine when they spoke, a low hissing that filled your mind no matter how much you wanted to block it out. 

 _let's go out,_ they said, in a faux-reasonable tone. There was the phantom sensation of curved claws settling down on your shoulders and a warm body leaning over you. 

_let's go out. howl at that moon. drink the moonlight. commit mass murder. i'm hungry._

"No," you said in a flat tone. "Fuck you."

Their voice came again, smug and self-satisfied. 

_i'm eating your liver._

You braced your hands against the porcelain sink, feeling the cold leech into your skin, and gritted your teeth. Looking up, you glared into your not-reflection, fury burning low in your guts. The same guts that Carnage was supposedly  _eating._ "The fuck you are," you growled, face twisting into a deep scowl. 

_liver. then pancreas. lungs. heart._

"Bitch." 

But they were right, however much you didn't want to admit it. They were hungry, and so were you. Your stomach hurt with the force of it. It was like some pathetic, starving creature had made itself a home on your organs and was digging itself out with blunted claws and broken teeth. "Fine," you bit out, relenting to the sheer force of their hunger ( _and your's,_ they reminded you,  _because you were stupid and did that weird thing with your stomach and food going out the wrong way_ ). "We'll go raid my fridge and then we'll go out." The part where you never returned to your apartment was not said, but it was felt. 

 _we?_ they questioned. 

"Yeah well," you muttered, "we're doing this together aren't we?" You felt the ebb of a foreign emotion just below the current of your thoughts, like the emotional equivalent of a smug smile. You shook it off and brushed the taste of vomit out of your mouth before getting dressed.

* * *

The hunger was almost overwhelming by the time you got to your kitchen and opened the fridge. It was definitely not helped by how it felt like Carnage was scooping out your organs with their claws and eating them. You reached for a Styrofoam container of day-old sweet and sour chicken from the Chinese place down the street and shoved it into the microwave for two minutes. 

_why are you doing that?_

"Because it tastes better hot," you answered absently, watching the container as it spun in lazy circles inside the microwave.

_like blood?_

You grimaced at their obvious attempt to unsettle you, but couldn't find it in yourself to have your appetite get ruined. "I guess," you said with shrug that barely shifted your shoulders, refusing to give them the satisfaction of making you uncomfortable despite how your insides squirmed. You busied yourself with taking even more food out of your fridge while you waited for the chicken to heat up, piling other containers on your small kitchen table and the meagre amount of counter space you had. Chocolate milk dribbled down your chin as you drank directly from the carton. Carnage shivered in delight somewhere in the vicinity of the back of your neck, making you shudder as you felt an indecipherable emotion like  _(!)_. "Like that?" You asked with raised eyebrows. 

 _yesss_ , they hissed.  _more._

Wiping your mouth with the back of your hand, you reached for the six-pack of chocolate pudding cups on the middle shelf. You peeled the covering off and scooped the pudding out with your fingers, sticking them in your mouth and sucking them clean. The tongue that slithered out of your mouth to lick the cup clean was too long to be your's. Annoyance and revulsion bubbled up in your chest and you shoved the emotions towards the symbiote's place in your mind. They seemed to have settled somewhere in your chest, a concentration of their presence just behind your ribcage, curled around your heart and lungs. 

The rapid beeping cut off your thoughts on how exactly you knew that, and you were glad to focus on the promise of hot food. 

Replacing the chicken with two more containers–one of scalloped potatoes and the other a Tupperware of mac-n-cheese–you sat down on the floor with your back against a table leg. The chicken was a bit too hot and may have burned your tongue a little bit but you were too hungry to care. You ate it with your fingers, licking them clean of the sauce whenever you reached for another piece.

There was the feeling of something pouring out of you, and you looked over to see a thick cluster of tendrils supporting a smaller version of Carnage's face sprouting from the right side of your chest. You watched as they formed somewhat of a torso, ripped open another pudding cup, and scooped it out with their tongue. 

_what?_

They bristled at your scrutiny, setting your teeth on edge and causing a weird prickling like inverted goosebumps under your skin. 

"Nothin'," you said, shaking your head and returning to your own food.

It was weirdly domestic, you thought, sitting there cross-legged on the floor eating old take-out and pudding with Carnage as the rising sun peaked through your blinds. And then you remembered the fifty-two people they had killed, the three people they killed while using your body as the weapon, and the faint vein of whatever emotion curdled into something like bitterness.

(You chose to ignore the traitorous thought of if this was how every day went, maybe you could do this after all.)

The microwave beeped again, and you got up to discarde the now empty Styrofoam container and replace it with the potatoes and mac-n-cheese. Carnage had retreated back into your body, done with the pudding cups if the empty cups scattered around you were anything. (All licked clean, of course.)

"I'm running out of food," you said between mouthfuls of scalloped potatoes. After the mac-n-cheese you had only a carton of eggs and a package of raw bacon. "Which is kind of your fault, by the way." You hadn't had the time to go on a grocery run in the past months, essentially living off of takeout and caffeine and the contents of your dwindling liquor cabinet; an expensive bottle of whiskey you'd been saving for a special occasion and a bottle of peach schnapps were all that was left now. As if to prove your point, you finished the potatoes and moved onto the mac-n-cheese. The Tupperware barely had enough to count as three forkfuls, which were all inhaled as with everything else. 

_i'm still hungry_

"Yeah, no shit," you replied, setting aside the empty Tupperware. "I can still fe–" your voice died out without warning, throat constricting as Carnage squeezed it from the inside. You scrambled at your neck, raising white lines that flushed pink with blood. 

What–what the  _hell._

 _quiet!_ They snarled.  _someone is coming_

They were right. You stopped clawing at your neck and instead fisted your hands in the collar of your hoodie. You could hear quiet footsteps coming down the hall, and the sound of someone muttering lowly to themself. But it wasn't just anybody, you realised, it was _Eddie_. Oh god, Eddie. Your eyes widened, and you wanted to call out to him and Venom, for them to help you, to come save you from the monster in your veins. And then you remembered the three people you had killed, how you had crushed that woman's skull in your jaws and how sweet her brain matter tasted as it slid down your throat. Shame filled you to the brim. It lapped at your throat, bright and hot. They wouldn't save you. They would tear Carnage from your body and then they would kill you for the awful things you had done. 

You were pulled from your spiralling by Eddie's furious knocking on your door. "Y/N? Y/N it's us, open up!" 

' _Bedroom,'_ you thought frantically to them. You focused on the image of the wad of bills you had hidden under the floorboards near your bed, and of the window. They realised their hold on your throat (and the rest of your body, you realised), letting you scramble to your feet and dash to your room. 

You didn't have time to find your screwdriver set and carefully unscrew the four screws so you just punched straight through the floor, wood splintering under your fist. Your knuckles split on impact and you felt the blood, warm and wet on your hand. There was the sound of your door being busted down, the crash of it being blasted off its hinges and collapsing on the floor. That was your cue. You shoved the wads of cash–hundreds, maybe just over a thousand, kept secure with elastic bands–into the pockets of your jeans and ran to the windowsill. 

" **Y/N?** " 

The latches were flicked to the unlocked position by your thumbs and you wriggled the window upwards with newfound strength you knew wasn't wholly your own. You stuck your head out and eyeballed the thirty foot drop. 

 _jump,_ Carnage said, and you wished you could say that you hesitated, that you told them that was crazy and that you wouldn't. But you didn't. You didn't pause for a moment. You simply slid your legs over the windowsill, ducked your head under the bottom of the window, and jumped. The impact with the ground below jolted up your legs, which should have broken. You looked down and saw that they were coated in their swirling red and black biomass, already seeping back beneath your skin. You shook your head and ran out of the stinking alleyway and into the bustling street. 

By the time Eddie, Venom already having receded back into him, saw the hole busted in your floor and your curtains fluttering in the breeze, you were already a block away. 

Eddie stuck his head out the window and looked around frantically, but it was too late. 

You were gone. 


	2. give them hell, give them teeth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> carnage says fuck blue lives and learns that there's some people they can kill without you losing your shit. (or, catharsis comes in the form of brutal murder and maybe-cannibalism.) new york city exists as a means of escape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter took so long to get out because it's just over 15,000 words. i was supposed to post this last night but i had school so i couldn't finish it in time. also i'd like to note that if anyone has a problem with me projecting my sexuality and various traumas onto a self-insert then die mad about it. (tbh tho, i was gonna feel weird about acting out my revenge fantasies abt my abusers on here but then i realised people in this fandom have shamelessly published some absolutely gnarly shit on here so like. this isn't even that bad.)
> 
> also i know fuck all about how many alleys san francisco actually has. this fic was written by canadian gang. this is unedited because it's 10pm and i'm not editing a 15k word chapter at ten @ night. i'll give it a once-over in the morning on the bus to school. 
> 
> [warnings: past sexual assault, homophobic hate crimes, the d-slur, victim blaming, graphic depictions of violence, cannibalism-by-proxy, strong language, attempted mugging, ableism, the r-slur, brief emeto, dude at the end pees his pants out of fear if anyone needs to be warned for that]

 

 

> _Come, you spirits_  
>  _That tend on mortal thoughts! Unsex me here,_  
>  _And fill me from the crown to the toe top full_  
>  _Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,_  
>  _Stop up the access and passage to remorse,_  
>  _That no compunctious visitings of nature_  
>  _Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between_  
>  _The effect and it!_

\- William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 5

* * *

The convenience store you walked into was not Mrs. Chen's place just outside and down the street from your apartment complex, familiar to your senses. There was no bell chime to announce your presence, just a synthesised ding from an electronic speaker. You shuffled in with just a slight limp, your head ducked low and your hands stuffed into your pockets. This place, and the old Italian man with greying hair who sat behind the counter reading a newspaper, was strange and unfamiliar. But it was also practically on the other side of San Francisco, which was a world away from Eddie and Venom as far as you were concerned, so you would take it. Even with the awful way a caved in section of your heart yearned for sharp words said in fond worried tones of voice. 

In the corner sat a wall-mounted TV which played a soccer match narrated in Italian, the announcers' voices laced with static and the picture slightly wavy with scan lines. A quick once-over showed that it mostly just sold food, but there were also a few shelving walls dedicated to toiletries and other household items like clothes and cheap toys.

You beelined to the back, wet shoes squeaking on the floor as you made for the backpacks that hung there, and swiped a nondescript black one off the rack. You picked up a pair of cheap earbuds, red ones with the little speaker you could talk into. A quick and breathless pat down of your pockets after you had run a comfortable distance from your apartment–just about five city blocks–had told you that you had left your phone back at your place, probably on the kitchen counter, before you had unceremoniously booked it. And while that was annoying, it wasn't anything worth going back for, not really, because the headphones were just a cover to ensure you didn't draw attention to yourself when talking to Carnage in public. It was mostly for the benefit of the tourists. A strange sweaty person talking to themself and jumping at every little thing wouldn't draw any attention from any San Francisco natives, but the tourists would stare and whisper and tell stories. Stories that could spread and reach the ears of a certain investigative journalist.

You paused when you saw that you could still see the old man (reading the paper, but you would bet all the money in your pocket that he had one eye on you) even with your back to him. In fact, you could see everything around you. All three hundred and sixty degrees of slightly upscale convenience store. You were uncomfortably aware of every aspect of your body and its surroundings, like reality had been sharpened between one blink and the next. It was disorienting, to suddenly be so conscious of your reality, from the way the old man rustled his paper when he turned a page to how you could feel every single fibre of the fabric that made your hoodie as it brushed against your skin; from the snapping sounds the valves of your heart made during a heartbeat to the water vapour that passed your lips with every breath you took, every contraction and expansion of your lungs. It was the worst kind of sensory hell imaginable. 

You realised too late that you were just standing there, black backpack clenched tightly in your grasp, shaking like a leaf as you were assaulted from all sides, internally and externally, by sensory input you just weren't equipped to process.

"Hey," the old man said, sitting up and tucking his newspaper into his lap. "You okay there?" He asked, concern coating his voice, all syrupy and thick, like his accent. You swallowed thickly and ducked your head into a jerky nod. His eyes slid to the ugly bruising all puffy around your eye, to the split lip, and the cut above your eyebrow decorating your face. You turned quickly and flashed him a tight smile you were sure resembled more a grimace. 

"I'm–I'm good, thank you," you said, probably unconvincingly. You turned away, hunching your shoulders and made for the drinks in the corner of the store.

"Stop that," you hissed into the collar of your hoodie, hoping that the thick fabric would muffle your impending argument with your alien ride along. Obscured from the counter's view, you leaned heavily against a shelf, squeezing your eyes shut and trying not to focus on the sounds coming from beyond the convenience store, people talking and cars honking their horns and the click of heels on concrete. 

_why? i've improved your weak senses._

"Because humans don't like to be overly aware of everything around them," you hissed through gritted teeth, your jaw clenched until a muscle twinged faintly in pain (and you could hear that too, the grinding of bone against bone). You made a short, sharp downwards gesture with your hands, a motion borne of your frustration. "We cannot function like that, our brains can't handle it. You are giving me super anxiety right now." 

You could already feel the onset of a massive anxiety attack coming on, looming over you like a heavy, dark shadow. 

 _fine,_ Carnage relented, and suddenly you were grounded again, feet back down on Earth. They skirted the edge of your connection with them, grumbling something about the inefficient senses of humans. You released a shaky sigh and finally opened your eyes again. You felt–you felt  _good_ actually, better than you had all morning, better than you had for the past hellish three months. "Thank you," you murmured, unsure of why you were thanking them for putting you back together except perhaps on reflex. 

There was no response from the symbiote except the faint feeling of them spread through your body (something you didn't know if you could _ever_ get used to), and you rolled your eyes. Typical. Relaxing the tension from your shoulders, you rolled them and–finally–went about gathering what you had come there for in the first place. For a few minutes there was blissful quiet in your mind as Carnage sat back and just . . . observed. It didn't last for long, however, because the moment you slid open the door to grab a few bottles of water, they spoke again, sibilant voice pressing against the confines of your mind. 

_we should eat the old man. he might snitch if someone comes looking._

"No," you muttered as lowly as you could, narrowing your eyes. "You are not eating him." You grabbed six water bottles and stuffed them in the bag, along with five chocolate peanut butter protein bars and a couple bananas. 

 _oooh,_ Carnage cooed excitedly,  _is that because we're gonna rob him?_

" _No_ ," you repeated, a little more forcefully, eyebrows furrowing as your expression slipped into a slightly painful scowl. "We're not robbing him either. I just don't have enough hands to carry all this."

 _you're no fun_ , they pouted, and then disappeared somewhere around your bladder to sulk.  _i am not sulking,_ they protested somewhat testily, spitefully shifting around your insides a bit. When you approached the counter you grabbed a handful of Snickers bars and set them down with the earbuds beside the bag you slung down a little bit too heavily. "There's–" you cleared your throat, trying to make your voice less scratchy and hoarse, to no avail. "There's some stuff in the bag too. Couldn't carry it all." 

If the old man noticed how bad your voice sounded (he probably did), he was polite enough not to point it out or offer you a throat lozenge. He merely smiled and pointed by the door, and said in a thickly accented voice: "You know, there are baskets over there." 

And sure enough, you turned and saw them, just like the ones at the grocery store, made of plastic and metal. Carnage's horrible laughter, at your expense no doubt, filled your head. "Oh," you said lamely, because that was how you felt, your shoulders dropping. 

He smiled warmly and you saw that one of his teeth was made of gold. "It is nothing," he waved you away, but seemed to be determined to embarrass you further. "You were too busy having a panic attack in my drinks aisle." You cringed, feeling like crawling into a deep dark hole (maybe even that bottomless red pit in your mind) and just dying. But he waved that off too, taking your things out of the bag and scanning them. 

Then he nodded to your face, no doubt referring to your black eye and split lip. "You running from whoever did that to you?" He asked, bluntly suddenly serious. You blinked at the change in tone, shifting on your feet like you were about to bolt. You wondered if this was a deer felt like as it stared into the highlights of an approaching semi truck: limbs all stiff and breath sticky in your lungs, not quite reaching your throat. By some miracle you managed to stutter out a reply, shaking your head in a negative. 

"No," you said, a nervous half-laugh bubbling past your lips, "Just said the wrong thing–" ( _you talk too much_ ) "–to the wrong guy–" ( _a serial ki_ _ller named Cletus Kasady_ ) "–on the street." ( _On the roof of a prison, where you blew his brains out after he stabbed you and left you to_ _die._ ) _Shoulders_  rose in an awkward shrug that brought them almost to your ears. "It happens."  

_nice._

Shut up.

"I'd hate to see the other guy then," he said, sliding your purchase towards you. You thought of the creature sliding around your guts, and of a gruesome smile with too many teeth. Yes. He would. 

When you paid–in cash–for your stuff, you did not run out of the store. You didn't. 

* * *

"A _week_?" 

"I'm sorry," the woman said, flashing you an apologetic look. "But that's the earliest bus we have going out to New York. I can direct you to another service if it's an emergency?" 

_bite off her head._

" _No,_ " you snapped at Carnage, and then immediately felt bad as the nice woman flinched. She was just doing her job. "No," you repeated, softer, scrubbing at your face. "It's okay. I can make this work. Can I pay now, or do I have to wait?" 

You exited the bus station with two hundred and seventy dollars less than you had entered it with, along with a week's wait. Holing up in a cheap motel wasn't how you had planned to spend your week, but it looked like that was how things were going to pan out. 

The sun was just beginning to dip below the horizon by the time you had arrived at the bus station, grabbing the city's shadows and stretching them long until they swallowed the sidewalk and the sky turned fiery. Now the sky was turning twilight blue; not dark enough to see the stars, but dark enough that the streetlights had turned on. With the absence of the sun the air had taken on a chill, which you shivered against. A hunger that wasn't wholly your own lined the inside of your stomach. It was a constant, dull ache interspersed with pangs of sharp pain. 

When the hunger pangs got too great, you paused at the mouth of an alleyway, rifling through your bag for the Snickers bars you had left. And perhaps it was a testament to how the past three months had left you strung out and exhausted, or how the monotony of walking around San Francisco had lulled Carnage into a false sense of security, but you only noticed the creeping figure approaching you when he shoved you against the wall and placed a knife against the side of your neck. It pressed sharp against your jugular, digging in just hard enough for warning pricks of pain to flare up but not to draw blood. You stilled instantly, every aching muscle tensing up. 

"What's in the bag?" A man's voice asked, foul breath puffing against the shell of your ear. His voice had a particular I-smoke-two-packs-a-day cadence to it. 

 _who the fuck is this guy?_ Carnage asked, finally stirring from whatever part of your body they had been concentrated. _are we being mugged? is this guy_ mugging  _us?_

Your tongue felt leaden in your mouth, even as it opened and closed several times. The knife pressed just a tad harder. 

"What? Are you some kind of retard or somethin'? I said, what's in the bag?" 

Casual ableism. Nice. 

"Uh," you said. "Some bananas. Chocolate bars. And bottles of water." You left out the eight hundred dollars cash. 

"That's it?" He asked. 

 _holy shit,_ they continued, incredulous.  _this stupid son of a bitch is seriously trying to fucking mug us. this is actually happening._

"I think you're lying. Give me the bag." 

_kill him! rip his head off his shoulders! or eat out his brains!_

"No!" 

"No?" The man asked, tone treading on dangerous waters. He dug the knife in until droplets of blood beaded along its edge and slipped down the length of your neck. "You want to try that again?" 

 _JUST KILL HIM!_ Carnage shrieked, and your decision was made, just like that. 

"Fine!" You shouted. " _Fucking_ –fine! You fucking win!" 

Before the man could say–demand–anything else you spun around in his grip and shoved the hand holding the knife away from your neck. Carnage was already enveloping you, impatient as ever, red and black slipping up your neck. Viscera curled over your jaw, almost tenderly if you believed Carnage was ever capable of the thing, pointed ivory teeth sprouting from the bubbling mass and sliding over to where they were supposed to be. They poured down the side of your face, thick and viscous, and your eyes were swallowed by wavering pearlescent eyespots, which blinked once, twice and glistened in the low yellow light provided by the street lamps. 

The man stumbled back further into the alley, because your hunched form was blocking the entrance (which also doubled as the exit), dropping his knife with a clatter. You straightened your back and rose to your full height, and there was a millisecond delay between the thought of moving your limbs and the actual movement, the cause of which–Carnage's hesitation, or yours–unknown. 

You didn't think anything of letting them take control, just handed over the wheel like it was nothing. Because you could smell this guy's expensive cologne even from that far away, could see the flash of a silver watch glinting on his wrist. He was just some rich white guy looking to get a thrill by terrorising those he saw beneath him, stealing shit he didn't need from those who needed it. You used that fiery righteous rage to tamp down the guilt that simmered low in your gut at letting Carnage do . . . whatever atrocities they were about to commit. When Carnage fell upon him, all claws and teeth and hunger, you averted your eyes and felt only a little bit sick. 

They slunk away under your skin when it was all said and done, thinning away into your bloodstream. The man's body was nothing but a still warm corpse with its chest caved it. You crouched over it, hands getting sticky with blood as you took his shiny watch and patted down the dead man's pockets. His wallet was made out of supple brown leather and contained his ID–Richard Sinclair, 27, San Francisco native–and a few hundred dollars that you pocketed without any guilt. You took the Starbucks gift card that was in there too. The money you could count later, when your hands weren't covered in a man's blood. "Jackpot," you grinned, feeling kind of sick but also kind of  _good_ , which scared you more than you cared to admit.  

Speaking of–

"Uh. Could you–" your request dropped off suddenly as you made a gesture with your blood stained hands "–could you maybe do something about this?" 

 _about what?_ They questioned, roiling form smug. They knew full well what you were asking of them. They just wanted to be difficult. 

"The blood," you said. 

_oh, that. okay._

You marveled at how easy they agreed to do something for you. You had expected more of a fight. You only realised _why_ that was when they sprouted half a body from your waist and sucked your hands into their mouth, long tongue winding between your fingers and licking them clean. The inside of Carnage's mouth was hot and wet and silky smooth against the skin of your hands; contrasting to the texture of their tongue–slightly rough and covered in a multitude of little bumps and ridges. Their fangs prickled your wrists, leaving little red conical indentations that didn't sting at all, surprisingly. 

When they pulled away, your hands were soaked in their alien drool, and you were very much uncomfortable in a variety of ways. "There had to be better ways of doing that," you complained, rubbing your hands dry on your jeans. 

 _"I like making you uncomfortable,"_ they said, out loud, before their form dissolved into a bunch of tendrils that disappeared under your hoodie and crawled into your veins. 

"Oh, fuck off." 

_you first, bitch._

You looked both ways before you exited the alleyway, doubling back on where you came from. It was a ten minute walk to the nearest cheap motel, and the stars were already out. Considering the events that had just transpired behind you, you didn't want to stay outside longer than you had to. 

Your feet slowed to an uncertain stop outside an electronics store, the front bathed in blue and red light. Between the bars in the front window, you could see some of the televisions, still on and playing the news. No sound exited the speakers, but you could read the closed captioning at the bottom of the screen, and the headline, big and bold. You could also see the pictures of the three people you had butchered as they came up on the screen–one wedding photo and two Facebook profile pictures. Emily Soren. Teresa Morossi. David Berg. You stared at them unblinkingly, looking at their wide smiles and eyes bright with life. Guilt lined your stomach and the inside of your skull, plush and thick like expensive carpet bought with blood-money. 

 _what is that? why are you feeling that?_ They sounded perturbed. 

"It's guilt," you said, tonelessly, unfocused eyes staring through the TV screen. A thousand yard stare, looking at nothing and everything at the same time.

_stop feeling this way, it's annoying. cletus never felt any 'guilt'–_

And then they cut themself, their sentence hitting a brick wall and turning into a conversational dead-end as they shut down, almost withdrawing from the conversation completely. Which you wouldn't have minded all that much. "That's because Cletus was a psychopath," you muttered. The mention of Carnage's old host made your stomach churn, and you pointedly ignored the way Carnage had withdrawn into your body, burying themself in your bloodstream to the point where you could barely feel them, as if they were shielding something from your mental scrutiny. Well, that was fine by you. You didn't care for Cletus and didn't want . . . _whatever_ it was they felt for him leaking over to you. You were fine with your tired hatred and revulsion and half-felt fear. "And it doesn't work that way. I can't just choose to stop feeling things–and believe me, I've tried." You walked away, feeling sick. 

 _why not?_ They asked, almost subdued, and inner voice muffled by the layers of muscle and viscera between them and your brain stem.

"I don't know. That's just how it is." 

_that's stupid._

You didn't say anything else on the matter, but you agreed. Emotions kind of sucked, sometimes. 

The rest of the walk was uneventful and Carnage remained a lazy presence at the back of your mind, their ravenous hunger assuaged for the moment. They occasionally interjected your guilt-heavy thoughts with lazy suggestions to eat people you passed by on the sidewalk, to which you would respond with a face and a hurried, "no." 

The motel you chose was nestled into the side of a grungy apartment building and had certainly seen better days. But it boasted an attached diner and was dirt-cheap, so you took it. Beggars couldn't be choosers and all that. You paid in cash, and used a fake name. And while the lady at the service desk probably thought you were insane after hearing you snap a quiet "will you stop _squirming,_ " to the symbiote restlessly stirring up your insides, she handed over the room key and told you the WiFi password and that the diner next door had a special 25% off deal for guests staying at the motel.

Your hands shook so much as you struggled to put the key in the lock that you almost bent the damn thing. When you finally managed to get it open, and you could hear the quiet click-grind of components sliding against each other as the key turned, you slipped inside without any further ado. The room itself was nothing special, single bed and a small bathroom, and was hideous in the way that all motels were. The striped wallpaper was faded but suggested that it was once a vibrant orange and pink. The bedspread was coral and embroidered floral print. You tossed the key onto the table and watched it skitter off the edge and onto the carpeted floor, before toeing off your shoes and pulling your hoodie over your head. 

Dumping it and your bag beside the bed, you sank down heavily onto it, hearing the old springs squeak in protest. Minutes passed by like molasses as you simply lay there on top of the stiff bedspread, half-lidded eyes staring up at the ceiling as your legs dangled off the end of the bed. Sighing, you awkwardly–the awkwardness mostly stemming from the fact that you refused to get back up on your feet–shimmied out of your jeans and crawled under the starchy sheets. 

You were out within minutes, the exhaustion of the day beating out the ever-present nervous energy thrumming through your veins.

* * *

You slept, and Carnage watched. 

With your mental barriers lowered, they took the time to explore your mind in a way they didn't get to a day's worth of hours previous. Too exhausted from fleeing a dying host and fighting with you and then lugging your body around like an ill-fitting skin after you had passed out from the strain, desperately latching onto a random memory of an apartment building and letting the street system ingrained into your mind lead the way. They spread out through your frontal lobe, thinning their mass until their probing tendrils were the width of a red blood cell, and weaved through spongy, blood-soaked brain matter until they were wrapped around your brain stem, nice and snug-like. From there they could settle down comfortably and just watch. Best seats in the house to sift through your memories and spy on your dreams.

They dug in and let themself get buried in the thrumming of your brain activity–the snap-fire of neurons, the flow of blood through soft brain tissues, the muffled beating of your heart.

As they settled in they made the split-second decision to expend the minute amount of energy it would take to heal the more cosmetic of your injuries. They dispersed the blood spread out like ink blots under the surface of your skin, drawing it back into newly created webs of capillaries. The ring of bruised and inflamed tissue was soothed and the swelling went down within a couple seconds. A multitude of small cuts were closed, leaving nothing behind.

Your mind, as it turned out, was a dark and dank place that reeked of suppressed traumas and poorly handled emotions. It was an ocean whose depths held sprawling deep sea coral maze of untreated neurodivergencies and childhood (and adulthood, it seemed as well) trauma. They followed currents of thought and memory and emotion. Hard to navigate in its own right, made only harder by artificial dead-ends–walls, around bundles of memories–you had constructed, but not impossible. They scratched experimentally at one those walls, pushing at the box until it gave slightly. Your brain activity spiked and you threatened to slip out of REM sleep entirely. More than a little frustrated, they settled for leaving it be for the moment and instead opted for burrowing deeper into your hippocampus and finding out what those were for anyway. The answer was confusing. While some were of your own making, they were also your brain protecting itself from its own memories. Interesting. What memories could you have that were so bad that your brain had taken measures like that? Interesting. Cletus hadn't had any of those walls.

Cletus' mind had been a sprawling, ever-changing landscape soaked in blood and smelling like a slaughterhouse warmed over. Many criminal psychologists had tried to tired to explore its vastness, or even just catch a glimpse at its inner machinations. Dear old Ashley Kafka had tried. Eddie Brock had gotten his shot, before Cletus was Carnage, and he had come close, but even he had barely scratched beyond the surface of the blood-soaked, sun-hardened dirt compared to their own intimate knowledge of its intricate workings. Carnage dwelled on the few memories of Cletus' they still held with them, imprinted into their genetic code. (First hosts and all that.) Killing his mother's dog with the drill. The sound of his father's screams as he was dragged out of the courtroom. Burning down that orphanage. The warmth of a man's blood trickling through his fingers as it spilt out of his palms. 

Carnage dipped into your dreams as your heart rate sped up and your brain began to taste of fear. Your breath hitched in your sleep and you shifted uneasily, eyebrows furrowing as your face grew pinched. Your fingers tightened their grip on the scratchy pillowcase. They watched with interest as your dream transitioned into a nightmare.

The calm ocean surface you'd been floating on turned choppy, the blue sky growing heavy with rain swollen thunderheads. You were being dragged under the water by something tangled around your legs, waves crashing down upon your head. A single tendril wrapped around your throat, choking you. Carnage realised you were having a nightmare about  _them._ A sick part of them (and really, wasn't that most of them anyway?) took great satisfaction in that. The ocean around you turned to blood and you swallowed it down in coppery mouthfuls as you struggled to breathe, fingers scrabbling at the warm alien flesh at your throat. 

As they observed the playing out of your nightmare, they thought. About killing those three people at the pier. About killing the man in that alleyway. The way you reacted to both instances. Guilt, regret, shame. All heavy, stale-tasting emotions that made your brain taste like shit. And then, the second time, a twisted sense of pride and satisfaction (all washed down with a bit of wavering guilt that was more performative for self-deception purposes). 

You were complicated, to say the least. As they creeped further along the nightmare took a backseat at the edge of their awareness. They flipped through your memories, tasting the faint second-hand emotions. Of taking money to rough up abusive husbands and boyfriends, threatening away stalkers and harrassers, getting into bar fights with leering men who didn't know how to take no for an answer. Oh, so that was it. Some people  _deserved_ to die. That man in the alleyway who tried to mug you had deserved to die. But–they realised as they delved deeper–not because he was a mugger? (Because people fell on hard times, apparently.) But because he had been a rich man who was mugging people to feel good. You thought a lot of rich people deserved to die and have their hoarded resources redistributed among the other humans. People like Cletus deserved to die. A man named Michael deserved to die. The forty-second precinct deserved to die. That intrigued Carnage, and they followed the trail that led to the memories that would explain why that was, only to hit another wall. Oh come  _on_. Did you repress _everything_? Of course they got stuck with a host with a dumpster fire for a brain. 

They coalesced on your chest, forming a red bulge on your chest like a puddle of gore. A frustrated growl rumbled through their biomatter, vibrating slightly. With a quick glance at the digital clock beside your head, they slunk back to the recesses of your mind. 23 hours. They had 23 hours before the bond between you and them solidified whether or not they (or you) wanted it, and leaving you would leave them weakened. 23 hours to find another, more suitable host who was less of a flaming disaster and didn't mind the pop of eyeballs between their tongue and the roof of their mouth if they so chose to. But they wouldn't. Part of them wanted to, desperately, to find a host like Cletus, but Cletus had been . . . he'd been one of a kind. And  _you–_ you had potential. Yes, you were a hassle, and strong enough to be able to take control, but you were also so, so angry. So full of rage, of hate, of pain. Not afraid to kill, if it suited you. And strength was strength at the end of day, and beggars couldn't be choosers. But still. They wrestled with themself, biomatter roiling inside your viscera, coiling and uncoiling along your small intestine. Staying meant having to put up with your desire to–ugh–do good and develop a partnership. Carnage had felt the urge, however fleeting, in your kitchen in the morning, when they had been eating the contents of your fridge no matter how you had tried to cover it up with a swell of bitterness. You had spent too long around Venom. 

Drawing back some tendrils from where they had been probing deep into your brain matter, they settled back in around your brain stem. All this thinking was getting tedious. They returned to watching your nightmare, except it was no longer about them. It wasn't even a proper nightmare anymore, just a hazy sequence of its last dregs swimming around in soupy darkness. Carnage peaked at the clock again, reading the LED numbers. 6:00 AM. They sent sparks down to the appropriate neurons, and watched as they rode along your nerves. 

Your eyes snapped open. 

* * *

One moment you were in the throes of a slowly slipping nightmare, and the next you were jolting awake, sparks of  _something_ shooting through your nerves. A strange noise escaped you, half stuck in your throat and clotting on your lips. "Hrk." 

You were sitting upright in bed, stiff and ramrod straight, fists clenching the sheets with a death grip. With a deep exhale you relaxed your muscles and grip, only to freeze again as you pulled your hands from your face after rubbing it. Strands of crimson were pooled in their dips and curves, following the tendons attached to your knuckles. Your eyes tracked them up your arms and all across your abdomen, tracing around your veins and the curve of muscle, going down below the elastic band of your boxers. "Hey.  _Hey_." 

You lifted your arms and they slipped off, dangling like loose strings before retracting back into you. Looking down, you saw that the ones outlining your abs and lower parts were doing the same, and let a little bit of the tension held in your shoulders bleed out. 

 _what?_ Carnage asked with falsified innocence. Little shit. You could feel them swimming curiously at the edge of your consciousness. Not doing anything suspicious, just sort of . . . hovering. Like they had been waiting for you to wake up. (Or they had woken you up themself, because they were an asshole.)

"You know damned well what," you snapped, throwing the covers off your legs. You swung them over the side of the bed stood before picking your jeans up off the floor and pulling them on both legs at the same time. 

Having someone in your head roll their eyes at you was an interesting feeling. 

 _i really don't,_ they said.  _i'm all up in your guts, y/n. there's nothing i don't know about your body._

"God that's so fucking creepy," you grumbled, searching for where you had thrown your hoodie the night before. "That's exactly what I wanted to hear first thing in the morning, thanks." ( _you're welcome.)_ You picked it up and smelled it before making a disgusted face. It smelled like sweat and blood (and it indeed had smatterings of red-brown blood stains along the hem and on the underside of one arm). Great. You grit your teeth, knowing what you had to ask of Carnage and dreading it all the same. 

"Gh. Can you like . . . I dunno . . . make a hoodie for me? Temporarily? I really can't go out in this if you want to stay hidden." 

 _what?_ They perked up at the back of your mind and you got the impression of someone sitting up in attention.  _no._

"What do you mean no?" You asked.

_i mean no._

"Why not?"

_fuck you, that's why._

In the part of your head that was still just you, despite how it grew smaller with each passing hour, you thought. And then you smiled, and it was brittle and mocking. "You can't do it, can you?" You said, as if it was a dawning realization. "You don't know how." 

 _yes i do! just because i won't do it doesn't mean i can't!_ They shot back, defensively. They prickled at your doubt, and you could feel them as they paced up and down your spine in agitation. (They had a lot of those agitated–you wouldn't call them nervous, not exactly–tics you had grown to recognise. You wondered how that was, considering the short time span you had been 'together'.) 

"Won't do it or can't do it? I bet you can't. Big bad symbiote can gut innocent people like fish but can't even make a hoodie," you goaded, smile growing wider as you felt their frustration and anger build like a sour taste at the back of your throat. It was dangerous, riling them up like this, but if they were going to be a difficult, manipulative bastard than so could you. 

 _oh,_ Carnage scoffed–and that was another interesting feeling, being scoffed at by a being in your mind,  _i'll do you one better. watch and learn, flesh bag._

You looked down and watched as they seeped from your pores and formed around you, biomass taking on the texture and colour of whatever they were planning on mimicking. As it turned out, they were in fact going above and beyond, as they had crafted you an entire outfit all the way down to the shoes. Baggy black jeans with a matching t-shirt, laced up combat boots and a red leather jacket marbled with black. Huh. They cleaned up good. 

"Aw, see I knew you could do it! How hard was that?" 

There was the narrowing of mental eyes.  _you manipulated me,_ they hissed, voice dragging up your spine like the blade of a knife. The clothes around you shivered dangerously, as if they were about to fall apart. 

"Yes!" You grinned. "Yes I did! And just for that–" you patted your chest, rapping the flat of your knuckles again the lapel of the jacket "–I'll consider grabbing you a snack on the way back here tonight." 

If you'd learned anything from Venom it was that symbiotes were heavily food-motivated. 

A strange concoction of emotions fell over you all of a sudden. A begrudging respect. A thrill of excitement. Vague annoyance directed at the self. And then it was swept away as suddenly as it had come, kicked under the rug of Carnage's mind. You raised your eyebrows, but didn't push it. You weren't going to press your luck with them any farther than you had to. 

You counted the money from last night (three hundred and twenty-eight dollars total) and examined the watch. A Rolex, and more than enough to cover the deposit on a shitty apartment in New York City once you sold it. But before you decided on what to do next, breakfast. 

* * *

Breakfast was twenty five percent off and consisted of a mug of hot coffee (black), two eggs (sunny side up), and a side of crispy bacon, extra greasy. As far as diner food went, it wasn't half bad. 

You plotted out your next course of action on a piece of complementary stationary with a pen you had pilfered from the motel lobby, jotting out all you needed to do. 

  * go back to apartment (passport, license, wallet, cancel lease)
  * quit job
  * sell watch - maybe wait til nyc ??
  * STAY HIDDEN!!!



It was a short list. 

You rested your chin on your hands, staring into the dregs of your coffee as you pondered your next move. A waitress came by and refilled your mug. The passage of time slowed to a crawl. It creeped along like molasses and pooled in your joints, further cementing you to your stool of cracked red leather. Each minute that passed weighed on your shoulders, pressing down on you as if you were Atlas the titan holding up the sky. The only sounds in the diner was the sizzle of greasy food cooking on the grill as the cook banged around the kitchen and of the news playing quietly from a radio a few inches by your left elbow. You looked out of one of the windows. It was still dark out, though the sky had lightened from the purple-navy belonging to the dead of night and early morning to the ultramarine of the twilight before dawn broke the skies with its fiery fingers. A car passed by, taillights glowing red like coals and streaking across your vision through the glass. 

_what are you doing?_

You took a sip of your coffee, not caring how it burnt your tongue. "I'm thinking," you said, voice quiet but not a whisper. The only other two patrons with you and the waitress didn't even cast you a glance out of the corner of their eyes. Listen to some stranger talk to themself wasn't a once in a lifetime experience in diners like this one. 

_is that what you're doing?_

You rolled your eyes. Dick. "Then I'm listening to the news." And then you actually focused on the low droning of whatever anchor was talking. Her voice was irritatingly bright and sunny for so early in the morning.

"–the serial killer known as Carnage is still on the loose despite Cletus Kasady being confirmed as deceased. His current identity is not known at the time, but he is still active, taking three lives late Sunday evening and one more last night. The body has still not been identified by police, but is said to be a white male in his late twenties, possibly early thirties." 

You stopped listening to the news. 

' _Current identity is not known.'_

The sentence bounced around the inside of your skull. Did Eddie not tell the police about you? The idea of that made something in your heart, some bleeding part you liked to pretend didn't exist, ache deeply. It made you dread the return to your apartment already. 

"'Cuse me, can I get the check please?" You asked, raising two fingers to catch the waitress' attention as she bustled by you with another pot of coffee in hand. She nodded jerkily, making her fiery curls bounce. You paid it in cash and finished the rest of your coffee in three burning gulps. "Keep the change," you told her, not pausing to see the look on her face when she discovered the fifty dollar tip you left. You slipped off your stool and out the door with the chiming of bells that hung above the entrance. 

Stepping out of the diner felt like a step out into the real world again. You didn't know what it was but that diner, barely full and at the ass crack of dawn, had felt like it was in its own dimension, strange and in-between. You shook it off and breathed in the cool morning air, letting the stinging in your lungs ground you back to Earth. The napkin and its objectives was crumpled up in the pocket of your leather jacket, momentarily forgotten about as you walked across a street to the Starbucks that waited there.

There was already the beginnings of a line when you stepped in, but that was alright. You weren't in a hurry. You waited in line and ordered an overpriced hot chocolate when you finally got to the front. The barista said your total in her best mechanical customer service voice, and you handed over the gift card. "You've got fifty-three seventy left," she said, handing over the receipt. "I've circled the amount here," she said, and tapped it with a pen. You nodded and thanked here and moved to the other counter, waiting beside a tired looking businessman. And while you appreciated the extra food and drink money, you had to snort, because of course Richard-Sinclair-who-mugged-people-to-get-his-rocks-off would have more than twenty five dollars on a Starbucks gift card. 

One hot chocolate later you were back on San Francisco's streets.The city was finally waking up from the late night lull in activity, eyes blinking open blearily as it woke up from their impromptu nap session on the couch, the credits to the movie it tried to watch rolling on the TV in front of it. People got up out of their warm beds, kissed their spouses good morning, and ate breakfast before sticking their keys in their cars' ignitions and rolling out of their driveways. The sun was rising above the horizon, chasing away the dark blue of the twilight until it lightened and was threaded with streaks of fiery orange; the clouds the colour of cotton candy. Cars slowly trickled onto the streets, and in turn filled the air with the smell of car exhaust and the sound of honking horns. 

Walking down the street with a Starbucks beverage that had cost too much dressed in clothes that you hadn't picked up off the floor made you feel like a normal person on their way to work and you know, not someone who was about to break into their own apartment. "Don't think I didn't notice that you fixed up my . . . everything when I was asleep," you said lightly, conversationally. "Kind of hard not to, when you wake up not feeling like shit run over." 

 _it was either that or deal with your bitching about it for god knows how long it takes humans to heal from that shit,_ Carnage said.  _don't look to much into it._ And then they fell silent, and continued like that for the rest of the walk.

The sun was well in the sky by the time you finally arrived at the Schuller building. For a moment you just stood there on the front steps, shading your eyes and staring up at your apartment. 

 _this is a bad idea,_ Carnage said.

"Yep."

 _and you're going to do it anyway,_ they continued. 

"Thought you were all about bad ideas." 

A scoff that resonated through your skull,  _only when they involve murder._

"We'll be fine," you said firmly, more for your own benefit than for the symbiote's (not like they needed it anyway), and began to climb up the steps with a heavy feeling in your gut that wasn't Carnage. "It's a workday. Eddie and Venom won't be home." You would know, after living next to them for a year and a half. You would know the ins-and-outs of their daily lives, up to and notwithstanding their work schedule. Eddie was always out of the house by seven when he had to go into the office. "We'll be fine," you repeated under your breath, but even as you did so you turned on your heel and ducked into the alleyway you had run out of a day earlier. No front entrances for–either of–you.

"Come on," you muttered, rubbing your hands together and backing to the wall behind you, "give me a little boost here." The arms of your leather jacket began to bubble and lose their texture and form to spread down to your hands, curling around them and turning your fingers into hooked black claws. "Thanks," you said unthinkingly. You could feel Carnage's surprise, faint as it was and disappearing as quickly as it had came. "Don't look too much into it," you mocked, throwing their words right back at them. "It's a reflex at this point," you said. With their help you had already reached the concrete ledge of your windowsill and was in the process heaving yourself onto it with a grunt. Unamusement swept through you like a wave of curdled milk and suddenly Carnage disappeared beneath your skin, leaving you scrabbling at your windowsill and scraping your hands raw.

"Oh shit–" you feet banged uselessly at the brick wall as you struggled to find footholds, hanging by your arms. "Fuck, shit, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I take it back!" You yelped. They relented, lending you their strength and wrapping around your hands once more. 

They laughed at you, loudly and openly in your own head, and you scowled as you waited for your heart to stop racing. "That wasn't funny," you snapped, wiggling open your window. Jesus, had Eddie seriously left it unlocked? He had to have known better than that. 

 _you're right,_ they started off solemnly, and then their cackling started off anew.  _it was hilarious!_

You climbed into your bedroom awkwardly, ducking your head under the wooden frame and squeezing yourself through the gap. For a moment you sat on the windowsill, concrete ledge digging into your tailbone uncomfortably, but then you were carefully doing something akin to the limbo with your nose brushing the window and you dropped yourself through, landing in a crouch. Leaving the window open–easy escape route–you dodged the hole in your floor and walked over to your closet, stepping lightly. Your steps made no sound as they fell, which you chalked up to the symbiotic material your boots were made of. A battered red suitcase was pulled down from the top shelf of your closet and filled with clothes, and, after a brief moment of hesitation that lasted a heartbeat, the framed picture of you and Eddie you kept on your dresser. Content with what you selected you zipped it up and rolled it out into the hallway and to the kitchen. You paused when you stared down the hall and found yourself looking out of a door-shaped hole in the wall to the apartment across from you–Eddie's apartment. Someone had put up caution tape in a big X across it, as if to deter anybody who wanted to step in. Right. Venom had knocked your door down yesterday. Thanks, man. 

Shaking your head and muttering under your breath vague insults towards Venom's methods of breaking shit first and asking questions later, you set your suitcase by the entrance of what  _used_ to be a doorway and began to rifle through your drawers until you found your passport. You scooped up your wallet off the counter and your phone as well, after a split-second of deliberation. Thirteen voicemails from one Eddie Brock (named,  _man-eater,_ in your phone because it was funnier at the time) and dozens of text messages from him, all frantic. You made a vow to hurt yourself by going through them later, when you were back in the relative safety of your motel room. You turned to leave, and stopped suddenly, dead frozen in your tracks. 

An envelope with your name scrawled on it in Eddie's handwriting sat on your table, which had been cleared of take-out containers. Tears filled your eyes. You blinked them away rapidly. You simply tucked it in your jacket, red tendrils forming an inner pocket that wasn't there. You sniffed, and said, "Don't ruin it." There was no answer except for a brush of consciousness against your's. Suitcase in tow, you ducked and stepped over the caution tape across the entrance to your apartment. 

Your landlord's office was stuffy and dusty. The only thing that kept you from sneezing was Carnage. The usually apathetic man himself was sitting behind a desk and all but pleading with you to stay. "Is this about the door? Because I can get that replaced, no questions asked and free of charge." 

"No, it's–it's not the door. And while I'm very interested as to how  _that_ happened, there's just too much going on for me to feel safe here anymore. With Carnage, and Venom, and all those people that died." You stood, the chair sliding on the floor with a squeak. "You can sell the furniture, keep my deposit." And then you were out of the door, ignoring the calls of your name and breezing down the front steps with your suitcase banging behind you. 

Time for the next item on your list. You punched in your boss' number into your phone. He picked it up on the third ring with a "Yello?" 

"Hey, Dave! I am _so_ sorry to do this to you but I'm quitting." 

"Shit, seriously?" You could hear the puff of air that left his lips in a dumbfounded huff. "Not even a two weeks' notice?" 

"I know, I know," you winced as you talked, feeling like a piece of shit for leaving Dave high and dry like this. "But something's come up, and I gotta leave the city. Like, by the end of the week." God, you sounded so  _full_ of  _shit_. 

His lowered his voice, and it sounded like he was cupping a hand around the old, employee-use bar phone. "You're not in any trouble, are you?" Dave asked concernedly. "Because I know some guys–" 

You cut him off before he could finish. "No, no, it's not like that. It's just . . . after all that nasty shit with Carnage I just need to be far, far away from here."

"How far?"

"Other-side-of-the-country far."

"Shit man. You're really serious about this."

"Yeah," you said, kind of quietly because it was also just kind of hitting you that you were dropping everything, leaving behind four years of the life you built; two years worth of friends and relationships. All for some asshole symbiote ( _hey, that wasn't very nice. it's not like i'm thrilled to be with_ you  _too_ ,  _jackass)_ running through your veins. You ducked your head and drew in your shoulders, trying to hide from the people all around you that you were about three seconds from crying in the middle of the street. Dave was nice enough to not comment on the fact that it sounded like you speaking through tears. 

"Yeah, okay. Text me your address when you're all settled down and I'll mail you your last paycheck," he sighed on the other end of the line. "Feel free to put me down as a reference." Your lips curved into a sad smile. 

"Thanks man. For, you know. Everything." Letting you crash on his couch, rent-free, for a month. Giving you a job when you had no previous experience whatsoever. And now, letting you use him as a reference on your resume for a new job in New York. A lot of things you could never hope to pay him back for. 

"It's no problem. Keep safe. And keep in touch, kid." 

You smirked. "You too, old man." 

And then he hung up, and you were left on the sidewalk amidst a sea of people, never feeling more alone. 

_not alone. you have me._

Your face scrunched up in a grimace. Lashing out at them wasn't  _fair_ , and you recognized that and would feel guilty about it later on (hiding said guilt from them, of course), but you were upset and felt like hitting something. "And what good are you for?" You muttered to them unkindly. "All you've done is force me to uproot my life to move halfway across the country and insult me." They shut up after that, a moody silence at the back of your head. In retaliation they settled down near your bladder, a heavy weight pressing against it. "Asshole," you said under your breath, fully aware that you probably looked like a crackhead, scowling and talking to yourself while walking down the street. But hey, at least you were self-aware of it. And god knew that any San Franciscan worth their salt wouldn't give a damn as long you kept your shit to yourself and didn't bother anyone.

The motel room with it's ugly wallpaper and even uglier bedspread had never looked so welcoming when you dragged yourself in at half past four, tired from walking all over San Francisco for the second day in a row like some sort of tourist because like hell you were taking Carnage on any sort of public transportation. You collapsed onto the bed, and Carnage shivered around you before the clothes you had worn all day fell apart, leaving you in your boxers and undershirt. Suitcase abandoned at the foot of the bed, you took the time you scroll through the texts Eddie had left, and listen to his voicemails. 

 **m:** y/n  
**m:** y/n please where r u  
**m:** are u safe  
**m:** do u need help  
**m:** is carnage still with u  
**m:** we kno it wasnt u that  
     killed those people we kno that was  
     carnage  
**m:** did u take control?  
**m:** we're coming to ur apartment  
     but its going to take awhile  
     because of traffic, even with v.   
     please stay safe

 **m:** srry about ur door  
**m:** please come back we can talk about this  
**m:** we can remove carnage  
**m:** if ur in control just text us back  
**m:** please

 **m:** are you safe?

 **m:** y/n please

 **m:** please just come back

 **m:** was that you on the news? did  
     you kill that man or was that  
     carnage? i didn't tell the police  
     about you. the only ones who  
     know are anne and dan  
**m:** y/n did you kill him. please answer

 **m:** called your phone. its on your  
     counter  
**m:** shit

You texted him back a short and sweet 'im ok', because you weren't cruel, and blocked his number. For good measure you also blocked Anne and Dan's numbers, without reading the flood of messages they both had sent you. 

Exhausted and drained, you flopped over on your side and curled into yourself. You weren't going to listen to Eddie's voicemails, you decided. But when your thumb hovered over the delete button, you found yourself lacking the courage to actually go through with it. ( _pussy._ ) Swallowing thickly, you turned your phone off and tossed it to the side. Without the light from the screen, the room was plunged in darkness. You were over aware of the sound of your own breathing and every little shift of fabric as you twitched restlessly in the stillness of the room. 

 _i thought you were going to get me snack,_ Carnage broke the uneasy silence without a care in the world, shattering your little depressed bubble as you remembered that you were carrying a nigh perpetually hungry other in your body. 

You sat up in bed, and glanced at the clock. Just a little bit past five. "Yeah, okay," you said, relenting, because maybe if you killed someone you'd feel something other than depressed. And you still felt a little guilty at lashing out at them earlier. Not that you'd ever admit to that. 

 _hey, now_ that's  _the spirit! you're coming to it now. i knew you would!_

"Oh," you scoffed, "shut up." But it did nothing to dissuade their–sickening, really–giddiness and excitement you felt bubbling in your chest.

It felt like acid reflux.

* * *

Despite Carnage's whining, you left the motel just as the sun began to set, some time after eight. They had compromised with you in forming the same outfit from earlier in the day. The motel door clicked shut behind you, and you ventured off into the night. 

It was a balmy night, and the streets were full of people. You stuck your headphones in your ears, your phone tucked in your back pocket. The opening strains of whatever song your Spotify's daily mix was playing began to play, and you lost yourself in that as you waited at a bus stop with a handful of other people.  Forgoing your previous vow to not take Carnage on any sort of public transportation until New York, you hopped onto a bus to take you to the nearest BART station, pushing a quick thought of  _'behave yourself,'_ to them while you stepped aboard. A man at the back of the bus was loudly singing Frank Sinatra. Despite yourself, you hummed along to it quietly, tapping a finger against your thigh. You left the man and his singing behind you as you got off at your stop. 

The BART station was bustling, mostly with people looking to have some fun for the night. You took your place in a crowded subway car and looped a hand in a leather strap hanging by your head. After only ten minutes, interspersed with stops at other stations to let people off and on, Carnage was a restless stirring in your guts. It felt like the butterflies you got when anxious about something. Pretending to take a call, you paused your music. "Dude, come on; relax. We have all the time in the world. Most nightclubs don't even open til ten anyways." 

_is that where we're going? to a nightclub? why?_

"I thought you were the mind-reader here." 

_i don't read your mind._

"Really? Not what it feels like sometimes."

_whatever. just tell me why we're going to a nightclub. i'm hungry._

"Fine, fine. Don't get your–" you struggled for a word. Carnage didn't present you with one. "Don't get your whatever in a bunch. You're always hungry; it's like one of your core personality traits. Plenty of people get up to all kinds of shady shit in and around clubs, you won't have any trouble finding a snack," you explained. "Plus, they're not Eddie's usual stomping grounds." 

_oh. so we're going because of your weird little moral code you insist on following._

You rolled your eyes. "This isn't about my 'weird little moral code'. This is about staying out of Eddie's way and me not wanting to walk around the shit parts of town waiting for someone to _jump_ me." 

_i thought you were into the whole hero thing._

The man beside you was looking at you kind of funny, but he was still minding his own business so far. "Yeah, right," you scoffed. "I'm totally into skulking around alleyways waiting for someone to try to beat my ass, or stumble onto someone getting _their_ ass beat."

 _you_ want _to do good, though,_ they argued. 

"I'm not having this conversation. Not with you, and not on a subway car surrounded by _people who aren't minding their business_ ," the man next to you suddenly did his best to appear disinterested in your conversation. 

 _don't get your panties in a bunch,_ they said slyly. You got the impression of a shit-eating grin full of pointed teeth.

"That's very funny," you said sarcastically. "You're a real riot." 

_i'm a regular comedian._

"Keep telling yourself that, and maybe it'll come true someday."

The train began to slow, brakes squealing as they clamped down on the rails. You tightened your grip on the leather strap in anticipation of the jerking motion that accompanied the car coming to a complete stop. " _Powell Street Station_ ," an automated voice–designed to be soothing probably, but sounding mostly like an autotuned Siri–announced over the speakers, but you were already halfway out the doors and following the flood of people back aboveground. Most people were moving in groups of twos and threes, along with the odd larger group, and you squeezed past them with practiced ease until you were back on the street. Taking a deep breath of air that didn't smell like exhaust fumes, body odor, and perfume, you continued down the street. 

Sneaking a glance at your phone showed you that it was just breaking nine o'clock. So you had an hour to scope out clubs and line up. 

 _an hour?_ _we'll have to wait an_ hour _?_

Jesus Christ. "Unless you've got any other bright ideas . . . ?" You coughed into your elbow

_yeah, actually. we sneak in._

You blinked. "Oh. That . .  actually might work." 

Sneaking into a nightclub went a little like this: you picked out one you had been to before and took a sharp right into the alleyway you knew the backdoor was in. You told them what the servers had been dress in, and Carnage's previous outfit turned into a pair of black dress pants and a black button-up, complete with a little name tag that said 'Red' mid-step into the alley, and they used a thin tendril to mimic the shape of the key and unlock the door. And then you were inside The Lux, and could hear muffled the muffled pounding of music. It was stupidly easy. 

Carnage changed your outfit back to your previous number as you exited the hallway, taking advantage of the low-light level and thick shadows that clung to the sides of the room. You briefly surveyed the room, eyes darting left, center, and right as you sidled up to the bar. Decent attendance. Not so crowded that you couldn't find a seat at the bar, but crowded enough that there was a good-sized throng on the dance floor and that the main floor wasn't fucking freezing, as what sometimes tended to happen. The scene seemed to be in full swing. You caught the bartender's eye and sent him a little wave as you settled down on a stool.

Afterwards, with a beer you'd been craving since Monday in hand, you turned until you had a good view of the dance floor and the other end of the bar. 

_what do we do now?_

"Now, we wait," you murmured around the bottle, hiding your spoken words in a swallow of your drink. "Keep an eye out for people slipping stuff into drinks, guys who get handsy and don't know how to take no for an answer. That sort of thing."

_y/n. y/n that stuff tastes like shit._

"Tough shit," you said, raising the bottle back to your lips. The glass bumped against your teeth. " _I_ like it." Out of spite, you took another large swallow. With Carnage grumbling insults towards to your taste in booze, you settled down on your seat and watched. It took a grand total of twenty minutes for you to spot a man across the room grope a woman as she passed by. Very calmly, you settled your tab and stood, striding to his place at the edge of the dance floor. 

And then you saw it, halfway there. The flash of a face you vaguely remembered enough to catch your attention. You turned your head to get a better look, and froze on the spot. God. God,  _no._ Panic flooded into your system like a tsunami, flushing out the beginnings of righteous anger that had been flaring to life in the pit of your stomach. A cold feeling dripped down your spine. Goosebumps broke out all over your skin. You could feel yourself as you began to shake. It started off as faint tremors in your legs as you stood there, tiny movements of your hands, hanging limp and heavy like weights at your side. Someone was yelling your name.You could barely hear it over the beat of your heart and the roar of blood filling your ears.

_y/n._

_y/n!_

_Y/N!_

The sudden shout slammed you back to Earth and you flinched, blinking your eyes. They were full of tears. Carnage was saying something. You were barely aware of it. You took a few stumbling steps back, and then turned on your heel and fled towards the exit. You had to–you had to get out of there. The walls were closing in and so was the air and you were pretty sure that he hadn't seen you but like fucking  _hell_ you were taking that chance. 

_hey! where are you going? what about my snack?_

Their words were buzzing inside your skull, along with unbidden memories of That Night. Flashbacks. Flashbacks of his  _hands_ on you, of him digging his nails into your skin until it hurt, of him hitting you so hard the bruises hadn't faded for weeks. Your memories of That Night were in bits and pieces, half forcefully forgotten so you could continue on like a normal fucking person and half shoved to back of the closet of your mind, buried under mountains of other shit until you could compartmentalize it and stuff it away with the rest of your other traumas. You know, like a grown-up. 

You got maybe three blocks away, shaking growing gradually worse, half-forgotten and hazy memories pressing down on you, and constantly fighting to stop yourself form hyperventilating before you had to stumble into an alleyway and puke up everything from the past day. You shoved yourself behind a stinking dumpster that reeked of shit and crouch down to bury your head between your knees and sob desperately. Your fingers dug into your scalp until it grew painful, bright points of pain bursting to life. You choked and sobbed and pressed your mouth into your knees to muffle them. Your breath came in quick, rapid bursts that did fuck all in terms of oxygenating your blood. For twenty minutes you stayed in the alley, curled against the sticky surface of a putrid green dumpster, shuddering and hyperventilating and crying through a massive panic attack that had been a long time in the making. 

As you finally started to come down, still shaking and taking in hiccupy little breaths, you started to become aware of the horrible feeling you'd been too previously indisposed of to notice before. 

Carnage was  _seething_ beneath the surface of your skin. They churned inside of you, slipping around and between your organs, filling the spaces between your ribs and knocking at them like they were the bars of a cage. You felt them as they spread through every inch of your body, running up and down the length of your spine, shot through your veins and arteries and capillaries like ink in water, surrounding nerves and ligaments and tendons. Pooling in your lungs, all thick and sticky and forcing them to expand and contract. They were in your bone marrow and plugging up all the holes. They were creeping up the back of your throat like bile and coating your tongue. They had filled the space between your brain and your skull, your skull and your scalp. 

"Ngk," came your strangled vocalisation. Your clothes writhed around you in a mass of blood-coloured tendrils. 

It took five additional minutes to feel like they weren't in your bone marrow anymore. 

 _what the fuck was that?_ They snarled, still coiled around your organs and filling your bloodstream.  _i just cleared the cortisol from your system yesterday and you just flood your body with it again? fuck you! am i fucking joke to you?_

You swallowed, and felt every muscle in your throat contract with the motion. You swallowed again. "Welcome to the wonderful world of panic attacks," you said, making a grand gesture to nothing in particular. You laughed. It was wheezy and hoarse and wasn't a happy sound at all. Suddenly solemn again, you said: "I'll explain back at the motel, if you want." 

A lazy affirmative, and the buzzing under your skin receded turned down a notch. 

They didn't say anything else, and that was fine by you. You rose to your still faintly trembling legs and waited for your clothes to reorient themselves and look like clothes again. You spent the rest of the night riding BART around the city until you stopped feeling Carnage curled through every aspect of your being. When you took the drunk train home no one called attention to the strung-out person sitting with their legs sprawled out in the aisle with snot running from their nose and red puffy eyes (except for the nice girl who offered you the last gulp of her flask and complimented your jacket), which you appreciated. But that was probably because they were all drunk off their asses and barely aware of their own faculties. 

You crawled into the motel room at sometime around when the night gave way to the wee hours of the morning, and jumped into the shower first thing. Carnage slipped off your body and back into your body, and you hurriedly stripped off your undershirt and boxers before tossing them into a corner. Both were soaked in anxiety sweat and smelled _rank_. Sitting under the scalding spray, you tucked your knees up to your chest and wrapped your arms around them. 

"Do you still want me to explain?" 

_yes._

"Last year," you started slowly, already feeling the formation of a lump in your throat, "something happened to me." You focused on the water coming down on your head. "Dude I sorta knew–saw him around at the bar sometimes, drinking with his buddies–cornered me in an alleyway; beat me to hell. First he was just happy to kick the everlovin' fuck out of me and call me slurs, but then he put his hand up my shirt to see if I was really even a–" your breath hitched as a sob crept up your throat. "God," you said, voice strangled, "just look through my memories." 

They did so, and it felt like someone had cracked an egg over your brain. They shuffled through traumatic memories like cards in a deck until they came found the ones pertaining to That Night. 

 _oh._ Carnage said. 

"Yeah," you said, so quietly you were barely audible over the sound of the shower. 

"And when I went to the cops to report them, do you–do you know what they asked me, first thing? Not, 'are you okay?' or 'how can we help?' No. They fucking ask me what I was wearing," you laughed, and it was bitter and thick with the effort it took to push it past the lump in your throat. "I tell them I got beat up and molested for being a lesbian and their solution is to tell me not be a dyke. _God_. Good fucking times." You sniffed, and wiped your snot away with the back of your hand.

There was silence, for what felt like an eon but was only a few minutes in actuality. You watched the water swirl down the drain, carrying away all of the horrible icky shit with it. 

 _that's it,_ they murmured to you, sibilant voice strangely soothing,  _let the water wash it all away._

 

It shouldn't have comforted you. It did. You started to cry, but your tears were lost to the water. Carnage didn't mention it. You stayed in the shower until you felt like a person again, even after the warm went from hot to lukewarm to freezing. 

* * *

Eventually, you did drop off into sleep, curled up in bed in proper pajamas that were soft on your skin. The rain drumming on the window played no small part in soothing you to the point of being capable of sleep, as well as the faint music that played softly from your headphones. 

The nightmare that dragged you into its jaws didn't care for all that. It split apart your skin with its teeth and swallowed you down, down, down, until you had fallen into its stomach. Memories like stomach acid burned your skin. They swam around in a bubbling soup of repression, half-digested and stringy.

You woke up to Carnage shrieking your name and a crash of thunder that shook the motel room, a scream clotting on your lips. You huddled at the center of the bed, blankets wrapped tight around your shoulders, and listened to the sounds of the storm raging outside. You had forgotten about the storm warning for the night, too preoccupied with your own problems.

 _you want to hurt the man. michael,_ Carnage spoke to you, sudden but quiet. 

"Yes," you whispered. 

_you want to hurt the police, too._

"Yes," and your eyes filled with tears. 

_you want to kill them. every time you even think about them, and what happened, you want to track them down again and stab them over and over and over again._

"Always." 

Anger was simmering low in your stomach, the frothing beginnings of rage. They deserved to die. Michael, and the police who had laughed in your face. They deserved to have their spines ripped out, their organs chewed up and spat out, to have their heads pulled through their assholes. 

And suddenly your rage was a wildfire, and the creature inside you wriggled and basked in the glory of it, egging you on. You knew the danger in letting them convince you, but they still had to feed, and why not let them taste the blood of those who had ruined you?

In their corner of your mind Carnage smiled, wicked and sharp.

You banged open the door and let the wind slam it shut behind you. As you stalked across the parking lot, Carnage swallowed you, embracing you in their biomass. They could get you to the precinct in five minutes. You were going to give them _hell_. You were going to give them _teeth_. You were going to swallow down their hearts and not let them crawl out of your mouth. 

As they took you across the city, leaping from rooftop to rooftop and pushing off walls, you immersed yourself in the sensations assaulting your senses. The rain beating down on you and rolling off of symbiotic skin. The wind lashing at you, buffeting your limbs and howling in your ears. Your tongue lolling out of your mouth. How the link between you and Carnage felt tangible now, like a thread you could follow from one mind to the other instead of an uneasy bridge.

Concrete cracked under your feet when you landed on the steps outside of the precinct. It was just as you remembered it. They pulled back and formed as a hoodie and jeans around you. The hood pulled itself over your head, hiding your face, as you entered. A receptionist looked up with a bright smile, only to have it wobble and turn nervous as she caught sight of you standing there, breathing heavily. "Can I–can I help you?" She asked, trying to hide her nervousness. She fiddled with the hem of her skirt under the front desk.

"Yes," you said, and your voice was coloured with a low rattling hiss beneath the words. "You can. Don't go in there."

"Excuse me? I'm sorry?"

You left her behind you, and strode past the desk to the offices beyond the door, ignoring her calls of "you can't go in there, excuse me, you can't–!" You walked in, and a blast of cold air followed behind you. Despite the hour, there had to have been almost two dozen police officers sitting around, talking–and throwing a wad of paper between them, in the case of some. Of course. There was a serial killer on the loose, after all. Security cameras were mounted around room but that was okay. You could destroy the footage later.

The hood slipped from your head, revealing your face. Water ran down the curve of it in rivulets, dripping from your nose and chin. Your hair was soaked and plastered to your forehead. You stood there, shivering and soaked to the bone. The doors shut behind you, and every head swiveled towards you.

"Can we help you?" One of them asked, echoing the receptionist.

"Thirteen months ago I came here, and told you that a man beat me up and molested me because I was a lesbian." Your voice was remarkably steady. It held up, as you stared at the men in front of you, eyes cold and hard. Some of them were already giving each other cautious looks and sliding hands towards their guns. "And you guys, the great big heroes that you are, asked me what clothes I had been wearing. If I'd done something to provoke him–other than exist, of course. Told me maybe I should have tried not being a big fat dyke." You smiled, wide and dangerous, and if your teeth were a little too sharp to pass for human, that was your business. "Well, you know what? _Fuck_ you guys. I'll see you in hell," your voice suddenly dipped into a vicious snarl.

The transformation was near-instantaneous, but you were aware of every millisecond that passed. Your clothes bubbled, and tendrils rose from the back of your hoodie and embrace you. Organs were rearranged. Bones shattered into splinters and were recreated within the same instant. You felt your jeans turn to liquid. Carnage dripped down the insides of your legs, running down the muscles and twining around nerves and tendons and ligaments like ink in water, giving you the strength to lunge across the room in a single bound. Claws like meat hooks formed from slithering biomatter with a  _snik_ only you could hear, the colour of blood and serrated. They surged upwards, thick and viscous, and swallowed your head. Teeth rattled around your jaw like loose change before a new, sharper set slid in from their sprouting places and took pressed them into their sockets. The bond was an almost tangible presence, tying you together like a tether looped into various hooks along your nervous system and spinal column. You immersed yourself in it. I became we and became I again. They were Carnage, yes, but together, you were also Carnage. You understood that now. 

You two were finally both on the same wavelength. For the moment, your two thought streams aligned with a singular goal: to kill everyone in the room. 

You moved together, as one, when you landed on the chest of the nearest cop and broke open his rib cage like you used to snap sticks in half when you were a kid. The rest of them opened fire at you, and the air was rent with the sound of gunfire and their screams. They died messily, organs and limbs and blood spilling across the floor and the walls and the ceiling, coating everything in red and chunks of viscera. The serrated edges of your claws caught on a loop of intestine as you were pulling your hand out of a man's abdomen and they came out along with the claws, small intestine and large intestine slopping all over the floor as they spilled out from the gaping wound in his abdomen.

_'Eugh.'_

_don't be a pussy! this is fun!_

A shotgun blast hit you in the back, and you whirled around with a roar bursting from your mouth. You sank your fangs into the officer's throat and ripped it out. Blood gushed from his jugular in great spurts as he collapsed onto the floor, gurgling. The shotgun shells, along with the rest of the bullets fired upon you, were harmlessly absorbed by the symbiote surrounding you and dissolved. The only danger they presented came from the heat they generated upon impact, but that was minuscule. They were going to need bigger guns than those peashooters. " _HEY MORONS_ ," you cackled, turning back to the remaining six men. " _I'M BULLETPROOF."_

Lunging forward, you ripped one man nearly in two, shoving your claws into his chest and pulling them apart. " _HERE'S CARNAGE!"_ You tossed him to the side without any ceremony. Two men were pinned to the wall by a hail of spikes you sent flying their way, piercing their chests in several places. Just for fun, you threw another and hit one in the eye. The spikes turned to dust a handful of seconds later, and their bodies hit slid down the wall, leaving bloody trails on the baby blue paint. But by then you had already filleted the second to last officer, and slashed into the leg of the only remaining one. While you had been dealing with his partner, the last cop was trying to crawl towards the exit, which you had finally stopped blocking. You sidled up to him in two strides, and placed a clawed foot on his back. He squealed when you pressed down. 

"P-please," he cried as you rolled him onto his back with your foot. His uniform was stained in blood, both his and that of his friends. He backed himself into a desk trying to get away from you. 

" _Please what?_ " You asked. " _You're hamstringed buddy, and I sliced through your femoral artery. You're gonna bleed out in a few minutes anyways."_

You crouched in front of him, bracing one hand on the desk as you leaned closed to his face. Carnage slid away from half your face. Thin tendrils waved across the bridge of your nose and danced in front of your eyesight. Gathering fistfuls of his uniform, you pulled him closer until he could smell the blood and gore on your breath. "Heya Officer Brant, remember me? You were the one to suggest that maybe I try being not being a lesbian, remember?" You snarled in his face. "This is what I felt like afterwards, you son of a bitch," you hissed the words, involuntarily drawing out the s sounds. Your voice had taken on a strange duality, your own voice layered on top of Carnage's as you spoke. "This is what I felt like in that alleyway, and in my bedroom after coming back from this place. Alone. Afraid. Like I was dying on the inside. Of course," you noted, "you really are dying, in this case." 

"Please," he blubbered, "please. I've got a wife and kids."

"Aw," you crooned. "That's nice. I want you to think of them, Officer Brant. I want you to think about how they'll know now what it feels like to have a part of themselves  _die._ " And then Carnage reclaimed your face and you slid your five claws into his chest, slow and steady. He jerked, gurgling, and spraying blood from his mouth. Then he was still, head lolling to the side. 

You stood, and looked around, surveying the damage. The floor was covered in blood and guts, and the splatters had reached not only the upper halves of the walls but also the ceiling. One of the lights fell to the ground with a crash, shattering and sending glass flying across the floor. 

_hungry._

' _Okay, fine. But eat quickly.'_

Carnage took back control, and you almost mourned the previous closeness. But you buried that feeling and turned away when they picked up the body of the man you had almost torn in half and tore into him. When they had swallowed down his heart and lungs, and sucked down his lungs, and scooped his brains out of his skull like a pudding cup they finally stood and passed back out the doors. They looked at the receptionist and smiled. She was pale as a sheet and shaking, and had a death grip on the phone she held to her mouth. Tears had spilled over her eyes and down her cheeks, leaving watery tracks. " _Whew_ ," they said, waving a hand in front of their face, " _do_ not  _go in there."_

_kill her?_

_'Do fucking not.'_

_aw, why not? we're leaving witnesses now? what happened to 'keeping a low profile'?_

_'She didn't see my face. Leave her.'_

_ugh, fine. hard to believe three seconds ago you were so much fun._

" _You're lucky we've got places to be_ ," Carnage said, pointing at her. 

They walked out of the front door and into the pouring rain. You had one more stop, after all. 

* * *

Lightning flashed above as you settled down on the fire escape outside of Michael's apartment living room. You were ten stories up, secured to the iron railing by thick fleshy tendrils as the wind threatened to bat you off it entirely. Carnage shifted inside and around you, cycling closer to your skin. There was that feeling of togetherness, of feeling scarily whole, like all you had done before was a live a life of an empty husk waiting to be filled.

_you ready to do this?_

_'Fuck yeah.'_

Together, you crashed through the window and landed heavily on the floor, splintering the hardwood and tearing up the plush red carpet. Seconds later the lights flickered on, casting light on the room. It was exactly the kind of modern, minimalist aesthetic type shit you had expected to see. You wanted to smash up all the furniture. Maybe you would, after you were done with this. 

Michael stumbled into the room blearily, blinking sleep from his eyes and shielding his eyes from the light. "What the f–" he groaned, only to cut himself off with a strangled noise when he saw you crouched on his floor. You grinned, sharp and predatory. You rose, hunched back straightening. "Oh my god," he shrieked, stumbling back down the hallway. "Oh my _god_!"

You chased him to his bedroom, busting through the door with minimal effort. " _Hello, Michael_ ," you greeted, reveling in his stuttered intake of breath. He had fallen to the ground, propped up on his elbows. Much like the cop from before. 

"How–how do you know my name?" He asked weakly. The air smelled like piss, and you looked down. A dark stain was spreading across the grey fabric of his sweatpants. You cackled. 

" _You don't recognise me, pissy pants? That stings, really._ " You put a hand on your chest in mock hurt, and took a playful step forward. He scooted backwards. " _Hm, maybe this will jog your memory. Remember that dyke you really 'taught a lesson to' way back when last August?"_ You planted yourself on his chest and rained down punch upon punch on his face until it resembled a slab of meat more. The claws had disappeared for the moment, turning into symbiotic knuckledusters. " _The carpet-munching–"_  punch _"–man-hating–"_  punch, and his cheekbone shattered under your fist _"–muff diver–"_ punch "– _dyke you gave your all to because they told you to stay the fuck away from women? Come on, we had some great times together, you and_ _I._ "

His eyes widened. And there it was. You smiled. Like before, in the precinct, Carnage peeled away from your face, but this time they receded down to your ears. "I just want you to know, that whatever happens next, that whatever I choose to do to you–because man, not even  _I_ know what I'm going to do–this isn't the monster. This isn't Carnage making me do this." Three tendrils looped around his neck and dragged him upwards with you as you stood back up, until your fangs were brushing the shell of his ear. "This is all me," you snarled, and wrapped a hand around his throat. You held Michael aloft like he weighed nothing–and he pretty much did, with Carnage flowing through your body–and forced him onto the very tips of his toes. He pawed frantically at your wrist, trying in vain to unwrap your fingers from his throat. You tightened your grip, pulling more strangled noises from his mouth as his eyes bulged in their sockets. " _I've decided what I'm gonna do_." You said, dropping him like a sack of potatoes. He scrambled to his feet. You shoved him back down, and pulled his arm from its socket. 

Michael screamed then, loudly, and you tossed the arm across the room. It was the last scream he was ever going to make, because your next move was to slash his throat to ribbons. His screams quieted to frantic gurgles. " _If you're still alive and aware in there,_ " you said to to him, " _I'm gonna give you a sneak peak on what's about to happen: I'm going to rip out your spine_." 

And you did rip out his spine, quite messily, as you had to snake tentacles past the wound in his throat and wrap them around his spinal column and  _pull._ But it did come out, and you dropped it on the floor, where it curled up like a bloody bony snake. You smashed up all the furniture too, and tore the pictures from the walls. For good measure, you also raided his fridge. 

You escaped onto the rooftop and stayed there until you could hear the sound of approaching police sirens, guzzling down the stupid expensive bottled water Michael had had in his shiny stainless steel fridge you had scratched up for shits and giggles. The sirens only came after the storm had subsided and the sun had risen on a new day, leaving behind nothing but the smell of ozone on the air, puddles on the sidewalks, and a curtain of grey clouds retreating to the East. Until they came wailing down the street, you sat there, legs dangling from the edge and breathing in the fresh air as both you and Carnage basked in the dawning warmth. And then you saw the flashing blue and red lights reflecting off the glass of a building around the corner, and sighed, rising from your position with great reluctance. "Guess that's our cue to go," you said, casting one more glance to the rising sun. 

_yep._

"Oh well," you said, and walked to the left side of the building, the one overlooking an alley. You simple scaled down the side of it, like a monkey, or a spider–with Carnage's help, of course. 

When you reached the ground and walked out and down the street, you were humming Frank Sinatra. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im happy that i finally got to write some of carnage's pov in this chapter. they're figuring out their host ! and learning the nuance of the reader-character's morality ! what makes a bad person bad, what makes a person deserve to die ? i hope i managed to make their internal conflict with themself clear enough. they want a host, and they want the reader-character's attention, but they also want to be independent and be with someone who doesn't hold them back. 
> 
> i also slipped in a little bit of what happened between scenes last chapter. i have my own Ideas about symbiote biology, some of which we've already seen (forcefully taking over a symbiote's body against their will is exhausting for both symbiote and host especially after bonding so soon, and human brains can't really process the way symbiotes perceive the environment around them) and some of which will be featured in later chapters. 
> 
> the 48 hour bonding process is actually something i took from the 2011 venom comic. after that two day buffer period the bond solidifies and it's exponentially more difficult and painful to separate the host and symbiote. 
> 
> please (clap) leave a comment that'd be very sexy of you and make me really happy.


End file.
